Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says America’s approach to foreign affairs is too militarized, evidenced by its two most recent wars; American viewers can hardly recognize news anchors anymore; meanwhile, people still believe Greek art was white, despite proof of its once garish colors. These discoveries and more after the jump.

The Washington Post and the International New York Times had the same front-page headlines today. Both had to do (as the Times put it) with the “Power Void” in the Mideast, deploring that America’s decade of attempting to create a new order in the region now is blowing up in its face.

The famous newspaper’s getting an online makeover, complete with new advertisements; the U.S. military has tested a laser that could change war as we know it; meanwhile, whether Kim Jong Un fed his uncle to dogs has come into question. These discoveries and more after the jump.

The Ukraine crisis and the German-American dispute over American intelligence and National Security Agency practices are without much doubt the beginning of the end of the American-dominated Europe we have known since the collapse of Communism.

Politicians talk about family values but do almost nothing to help families. They talk about parental responsibility but do almost nothing to help parents. They talk about self-sufficiency but do precious little to make self-sufficiency a reality for those who must struggle hardest to achieve it.

Plea bargaining or persuading criminals to snitch on their associates—a tactic frowned upon by international legal experts—is widely used in the U.S. police and legal system. Over the last year or so, however, a trickle of information about the other secret program has come to light, and it opens an astonishing new window into the privatization of U.S. intelligence.

U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries may be militarily effective, but they are killing innocent civilians in a way that is obscene and immoral. I’m afraid that ignoring this ugly fact makes Americans complicit in murder.

Just days after the U.S, Japan and South Korea flew through China’s freshly declared air defense zone over the contested Senkaku Islands and an untapped natural gas field, China deployed fighter jets and an early warning aircraft to the region.

Professors and pundits are downgrading President Kennedy’s legacy these days, seeing him as an ordinary, even ineffective leader. The people, three-quarters of them, according to polling done this month by the Gallup organization, rate him as the greatest of modern presidents.

Being negotiated right now are American-sponsored corporate efforts to alter trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific international trade relations through new agreements that undermine or effectively nullify many countries’ existing national legislation on health, environment, pricing, food safety and other issues.